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Sara R Ward

Hey friend,

I’m Sara and I’m so glad you’re here!

I’m a mom to three children by adoption (one who is in heaven) and married to Sam.

Our family has been through some major challenges: infertility, adoption, cancer, and the loss of our two-year-old son. My life is not perfect—not even close.

But through these difficulties, God has brought redemption to our story. These challenges taught me to pursue a life fully devoted to him and to discover an extraordinary hope beyond my circumstances.

I started this blog a year after the death of my son, as I felt a nudge to encourage others who’ve walked the hard road of loss. As the blog grew, it’s become a place to find encouragement and build a deeper passion for God.

My writings focus on faith, grief, parenting, marriage and adoption.

My mission is to help you draw closer to Christ, overcome life’s challenges and experience a deeper faith to live with purpose and power.

Even though my life is not perfect, I’m loved by a God who is.

May you learn to embrace your imperfect life by drawing closer a God who loves you and longs to bring redemption to your beautiful and messy life.

My story

My story starts out like all good fairy tale endings—newly married with the fresh promise of “happily ever after.”

I had no idea what Sam and I would face, but I never imagined it would be this hard. Infertility and Sam’s cancer at age 30 left me wondering if we would ever have a family and get our “fairy tale ending.”

After Sam went into remission, we pursued domestic adoption and were thrilled to bring our daughter home from the hospital in 2005. Her birth was one of the most joyful moments of my life.

A few years later we started the adoption process again. When we brought our son home, we thought we’d finally completed our family. Little did we know we faced our biggest mountain yet.

I had no idea my son had an incurable genetic disease, broken so deep at the mitochondrial level, there was no therapy, no medication, no surgery, nothing that could fix the defective gene in his DNA.

Over the next few years, his brain stopped growing and his muscles weakened until he could no longer breathe.

Before I learned he was sick, I had nine months of bliss. Nine months of Silas smelling like spit-up and baby shampoo, peeing like a fountain during diaper changes, and laughing when the ranch dressing bottle made a farting sound. He had a man’s sense of humor before he turned one.

But at Silas’ nine-month checkup the doctor noticed some developmental delays and ordered an MRI.

When the phone rang a few hours after the test, I knew this was not good news. I sat down on the edge of the bed as the doctor told me there were dark spots on Silas’ brain that were consistent with Leigh’s disease.

She recommended we see a neurologist the next day, so I hung up and did what every parent should not do when they think their child is sick. I googled it. I read through the description of the disease, stopping when I got to the prognosis.

There is no cure. Life expectancy is two or three years.

The pain I felt in that sentence was something like the moment when glass shatters on the floor. My heart splintered into a million shards.

Part of motherhood is taking the good with the bad. The laughter with the tantrums. The happiness with the pain.

Being a mother means parenting a broken or healthy child and loving your child either way.

Because part of the story of motherhood is that it never really was about us.

We choose motherhood because it’s one thing that changes our lives powerfully. And we’d choose it again, because we finally understand that our children are part of what makes this journey through life even more beautiful.

We’d choose this child whether they are healthy or sick, an A student or C, future doctor or future garbage man.

We’d choose them, regardless. This is beauty of motherhood. This is our happily ever after.

We make our peace with imperfect lives and start to live again more fully and more broken.

So I open my heart to the what-might-be’s, the beautiful messes and the bruised souls. I spend my time stretched thin, the unending meals that bring us together in fellowship, the ever piled up dishes, the half done home projects, the dog who needs a walk. Where would my stories come from if not from life?

So I leave the dishes in the sink and go out to the garden and soak in something my soul has been craving. A moment small. A glimpse of Eden. A taste of God’s glory.

It may not be the happily ever after I expected, but it is an extraordinary joy I’ve found only in Christ.